Amusing anecdotes & random ramblings
Posts tagged Christmas
My Chinese Christmas dinner
Dec 24th
While you all prepare to tuck into your cliched turkey & cranberry Christmas dinner and bemoan that it’s the same meal every year, bear in mind that I wish, that just for one tiny year, that I could have a turkey & cranberry dinner with all the trimmings. Especially roast potatoes!
Not because it’s particularly tasty – any meat that dry should belong in the Sahara, surely? – but because when my parents do Christmas dinner, it’s … rather different. Fantastically tasty, and as with all home-cooked food it’s heartwarming and fantastic, but for once, I’d like to try a turkey’n'cranberry dinner that wasn’t mass-cooked in a canteen or microwaved in a local pub.
They’ll probably cook the same sort of thing this year, but I really must ask how they produce all that food…
Giving my right hand some exercise…
Dec 9th
Yes, it’s that one time of year when I let my right hand do more than just push buttons all day, and actually make it WRITE things. Y’know, on pen and paper.
So if you want a Christmas card from these very fair hands, please feel free to send me your address and I shall dispatch one forthwith.
[Americans, your Christmas cards are already in America. 
]
Christmas in August?
Aug 10th
The sun may be shining – or more likely, there’s stormy summer clouds overheard. Either way, it’s hot, sticky, and sweaty.
Hey, why not think about what you’re doing for Christmas ?
and if you think I’m joking, please note the following:
- I was walking through Soho the other day (in the pouring rain) and two ladies dressed in scantily-clad Christmas outfits were handing out flyers which invited people to book their Christmas party at a specific pub
- The house at the end of the road has decided to put on their Christmas lights on the outside…
- Selfridges, one of London’s top department stores, has started offering their range of festive goods
Bah. They could have at least waited till September!
Can you hear the people sing?
Dec 12th
As I speak, there is the glorious sound of a gospel choir working their way through a bunch of classic hymns and not-so-classic modern pop tunes.
This would be great, if it was not Friday at 4pm, they were on the ground floor of the building I work in and only the bottom two floors (those belonging to BBC Worldwide) are enjoying the party, complete with mince pies, wine, DJ and glitterball. In the meantime, the wage slaves up above have to – in theory – keep working.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t arrived back at the BBC just when the Christmas party limit was slashed, so my “departmental” Christmas party last week was at a bar, and consisted of some free drink – and far too late – some very unChristmassy canapes. Although I’m lucky I got to go to one at all, I suppose…
Then again, my first BBC Worldwide Christmas party was quite an eye-opener. I’d only been working for a week, and got shepherded to the party at Heaven, which included girls dancing in cages, and ice sculptures where you could drink vodka from an ice woman’s breast. This was 1997, mind you…
Dear BBC, why have you cancelled my Christmas?
Oct 28th
Ever since I was a wee nipper, Christmas Day always started at 2pm (our family were always late risers…) when Top of The Pops was on BBC One, Christmas Day. We’d emerge from our respective bedrooms, and open our presents to the latest bangin’ tunes of 1987, with occasional home camera footage. Which is quite scary twenty years on.
Fortunately, while we’ve ditched the self-filming thing, opening our presents to the tune of Top of The Pops is something we still do now on the odd times we do get together at Christmas – much to the bemusement of the strangers from the outside.
And now the BBC have cancelled Christmas Top Of The Pops. Bah, harumph and all that. We’ve cancelled Christmas in protest.
Where's the Fairytale of New York?
Dec 5th
Update: Heard it on 6 December. Hurrah. Christmas can now officially start!
Despite having spent the last three days trotting around all the shopping centres that Manchester and Cheshire have to offer – in the hunt for a new pair of spectacles actually! – and spending countless hours on shopping websites, I still don’t quite feel that Christmassy.
It’s partly because I’m still a bit ill so instead of rich mince pies I’m mostly craving plain jacket potatoes – and half-dreading the 12-hour drink fest that is the annual works Christmas party this weekend with special mystery guest star.
But it’s mostly because despite all the driving around and listening to the radio at work all day, I still haven’t yet heard The Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. The definitive bitter-sweet Christmas tune, and one that never fails to give me Christmassy memories, such as snow falling on an American car park. Ahhh, snow, where have you gone?
Has it been taken off mainstream UK radio? Has it now been deemed too unChristmassy? Is there a mass conspiracy behind its’ disappearance off UK Radio? Or is it just me?
Watch out for Christmas
Dec 19th
I had to head into town to do a little last-minute Christmas shopping (with my hectic schedule this week, today was actually the last lunchtime I realistically had to pick up last-minute bits and pieces).
So thus, while I was carrying my pack of toilet paper across the city centre, really annoying sales people kept interrupting my path. People selling The Big Issue. People selling gift-wrapping paper. Chavs selling mistletoe. Evil market traders pushing plush toys on little kids while their despairing parents struggled to figure out how they were going to pay for it.
But the worst of the lot has to be the watch sellers. There they are, standing on street corners, hawking their wares. Why? I defy you to find anyone who doesn’t already have a watch. You only have one wrist, one time zone. Why would you need more than one watch?
You know your nearest and dearest are really struggling for present ideas when they end up giving you a watch from a market trader for Christmas. Or perfume or aftershave, for that matter.
Then again, I find myself every year giving books, CDs or DVDs to the people I love and my friends. And every time, those books/CDs/DVDs tend to sit there, unused, unwatched, unloved. I think I need to broaden my gift-giving horizon next year. If I can afford to.
Can't we just cancel Christmas?
Dec 9th
Sorry to go on about this, but I really think it’d be better all round if we all postponed Christmas. Just by a week or so, just to give me a little more time.
The washing-up has been piling up alongside the laundry, simply because I need to get the international Christmas cards and presents out by Monday and get most of my family presents out of the way by Saturday.
My impending sense of panic and doom is, however, not helped by the terrible Christmas music that the shops and supermarkets are inflicting on my poor ears in an attempt to get me into the festive spirit.
Wizzard’s bloody cliched Christmas song kept stalking me the other day down the high street as I went into shop after shop in a vain attempt to find a suitable present. And then on the drive home, it came on again – from a caller who wanted that song instead of a sweet Christmas carol. Which is at least more calming after a long hour spent gazing at things that nobody could possibly want. Anyone who wishes it could be Christmas every day needs their bloody head examined.
In the meantime, VH1 are asking for your favourite Christmas song. Please let it be the superlative Fairytale of New York (being re-released this Christmas apparently). Let it be Dear Jessie. Let it be Always On My Mind. Let it be anything but that bloody Slade song.